A Tulsa County official questioned the need for proposed legislation triggered by the former Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz’s patronage appointment of foreclosed property assessors.
“I’m not saying the citizens don’t have a right to transparency, but whose battle are we fighting?” Terry Simonson, director of Governmental Affairs at the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office, told Tulsa World. “Where is the customers’ complaint saying, ‘We demand credentialing for these appraisers?’ ”
At issue was legislation proposed by Rep. Regina Goodwin, (D-Tulsa), that would require sheriff’s appraisers in counties with a population of more than 65,000 to be certified real estate appraisers, licensed real estate brokers or licensed real estate professionals with at least two years’ experience.
For all counties, the proposed law bans close relatives of the sheriff from acting as an appraiser. Current law requires only that sheriff’s appraisers be “disinterested” parties and county residents.
In May 2015, then-Sheriff Glanz told the Tulsa World he considered the part-time appraiser positions “patronage jobs” and assigned them to friends and political supporters. Records showed hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid to each of 12 appraisers over a five-year period. Appraisals are charged to parties involved in the foreclosures, chiefly financial institutions. Simonson said he is unaware of any complaints about the cost or accuracy of those appraisals, and said when Sheriff Vic Regalado took office in April; he hired a certified appraiser to review the work of Glanz’s appraisers.
“He found nothing wrong,” Simonson said.